Apple's iAd service to go global

Apple's iAd network is being deployed worldwide, expanding beyond North America and the UK, with developers reporting ad impressions coming from around the world, according to a new report.

MacRumors has received word that Apple has started serving up iAds around the world. Developers report seeing ad impressions from new global locations, the report notes. Until recently, the service was only available in the United States and United Kingdom.

The news of a global roll-out of the iAd service coincides with a report that Apple plans to open a new Manhattan office for the growing iAd team. Apple this summer was looking to hire staff for the "iAd Creative & Strategy team" based in New York City. Currently, employees work out of the office that Quattro Wireless used before being bought by Apple.

According to Apple's official iAd website, "iAd reaches millions of iPhone and iPod touch users around the world." The company highlights having over 160 million iTunes accounts across 23 countries, although it doesn't specify whether all of these countries can view iAds.

In addition to the global expansion of iAd, advertisers will gain several million more potential customers this month when iAd comes to the iPad with the release of iOS 4.2. Monday's release of the golden master version of iOS 4.2 to developers indicates that the iOS update is imminent.

Apple's $275 million purchase of Quattro Wireless in January paved the way for the interactive iAd platform. Quattro Wireless wasn't Apple's first choice, though. In late 2009, Apple made a bid for an acquisition of mobile advertising giant AdMob, but after Apple let a 45 day "no shop" provision with AdMob lapse, Google stepped in and paid a $150 million premium to snatch up the company.

Currently the user agreement in the iAds framework IDE says it can be used to deliver to iOS devices only, so we should be looking for a change to the user agreement before that happens.

Oh, I wasn?t suggesting they would open it up without letting anyone know, I?m suggesting that they are being typical Apple by testing on a smaller, controlled environment that they can push to the rest of the web when they feel the time is right.

I?d expect a demo as this will be big. Really big!. Besides being a very direct attack on Google, it will also be independent of Flash and therefore much harder to block, which would be a selling point to advertisers.

It could take years before this becomes a viable option with ?open webcode?, but I think Apple would be foolish not to be planning for this eventual growth of iAds. If they aren?t, then why not just use Xcode for iAds.

I am very supportive of iAds to be expanded to traditional websites, not just Apps. This is especially more relevant now, with the iPad, and the expansion of the Apps Store for the Mac.

Most of my websites projects are intended to be non-commercial. I spend thousands of dollars annually of my own personal funds to support them because I did not want ads whatsoever, especially the kind of ads that come from Google. However, I had to cut back a bit because of the impact of the economic recession.

If Apple would adhere to its concept of more informative ads, I would be interested to have some of them in the quasi-nonprofit versions of the websites -- to be able to raise sufficient funds to cover the annual expenses, instead of relying on my own funds.